In the field of medical treatments for teeth and jaws, including various restorative treatment and orthognathic surgery with dentures, crown, etc, the process of establishing a treatment plan which is customized to be suitable for the individual condition of each patient is performed by simulating mandibular movements.
The simulation of the mandibular movements has been done with an articulator. The articulators are classified into non-adjustable articulator, semi-adjustable articulator, and full-adjustable articulator with the simulation capability. But basically, the simulation of the mandibular movement is performed with input of multiple angular values to the articulator which are main keys to the characteristic of the border movement because the mandibular movement of the articulator is done within border movement.
For accurate diagnosis and treatment, it is important to simulate the mandibular movements as closest to the actual mandibular movements, and so the research for this has continued. However, the above research, because of the limitation that the simulation of the mandibular movements is performed with the articulator, results in finding the angular values for adjusting the articulator to move as closest to the actual mandibular movements.
However, the aspects of the mandibular movements are complicated because these are done by the complex interact of the TMJ (temporomandibular joint), teeth, and masticatory muscles, etc. Whereas, since the articulator is designed by simplifying the mandibular movements with several variables for the simulation of the mandibular movements, there is an essential limitation in simulating actual the mandibular movements.
In addition, it is possible with the articulator to perform the simulation only for the border movement corresponding to the maximum movement range in which the mandible can move largest, because it is difficult to reproduce all the complex and various mandibular movements with the mechanical mechanism of the articulator. Therefore, it cannot get the information about the mandibular movements within the boundary according to the border movement, and thus cannot simulate entire the mandibular movements.
Meanwhile, since the mandibular movements are universally defined based on representative variable values, it is difficult to apply this method to the unusual patients. For example, in case of one of the jaw joints is normal while the other is abnormal, the border movement would not be symmetrically done and thus it is impossible to define the mandibular movement with several variable values input to the articulator.
As described above, if the problem caused by performing the simulation with the articulator can be solved fundamentally, it would be expected that the range of applicable clinical cases is widened and simulations in conformity with actual situation are performed more in conformity with the actual thing.